Manipur News

This editorial is prompted by reprimands from readers and well wishers who pointed out the insensitivity shown by the IFP in publishing the vividly clear picture of a raped and murdered girl some days ago on its front page. We do apologise for the serious slip, and hope not to repeat the mistake again. Our excuse is the usual. In the late evening rush hours of newspaper production, sometimes it is difficult to keep out the printer’s devil from playing havoc. Everybody who has had a formal academic course in journalism would have been told of this in their classes and also shown glaring bloomers even in very reputed newspapers in the past. But as we said this is only an excuse of a mistake we have made but not by any means an indicator we will continue to be lax in guarding against such insensitivities slipping past our news and image vetting procedures. This brings to the fore one other concern. As in academics, journalists too need to be put through occasional refresher courses in new developments in the professions as well as standards of general ethics which undoubtedly have a profound bearing on the discharge of their duty. After all, although in a different way, much of the terms of conduct of this profession too are cerebral in nature.

The Department of Information and Public Relations, DIPR, government of Manipur has a fortnight long certificate journalism training course each year with the objective of grooming young men and women on the threshold of choosing a career to develop an interest in the profession by getting them to have a glimpse of its inner dynamics. Senior journalists in the state are the resource persons for these annual events and the trainees are taught the classical definitions as well as practical problems of the profession. While this is a good effort, the point to be noted is, not many of those who undergo these courses ever join the profession. At the local level, the working conditions of the profession cannot match government jobs, so the brighter ones normally opt for the latter. Indeed many of them enlist in the DIPR courses for the certificate in the hope this would enhance their chances of getting into “any government job”, even a grade three or four one. The quality of education in the state being such, not many of them would also be able to match their competitors from many other states for journalistic jobs in the open market in better paying environs of other Indian metropolises.

This being the scenario, we would like to suggest that it would be much more profitable for the DIPR course to be converted to a refresher course for working journalists. The lectures then would not necessarily have be about news gathering or newspaper production, but can have a much larger parameter. As for instance, the course could orient itself towards issues like gender sensitivity, child rights, human rights, law, or for that matter grassroots welfare programmes of the State as well as Central governments, all of which the profession has to deal with, and all of which undoubtedly would have a strong bearing on the quality as well as efficacy of journalism in the state. The government could also tie up with the Manipur University, which already has a journalism department, and conduct such refresher courses periodically. Such an arrangement would be ideal, for the resource persons, not just in journalism but also in the other subjects of relevance to the profession would be readily available. Besides the government, we wonder if it would not be possible for some of the well-funded NGOs to hold lesser versions of the courses by way of workshops and media seminars. While there is a profusion of NGOs in the state working in the areas of HIV/AIDS, environment, gender issues, conflict resolution, we wonder what is keeping a sound media NGO from materialising here. Nobody will doubt how important the media in a situation such as Manipur’s, and in fact, the media’s relevance is also profound in the success of the campaigns by NGOs working in the above named fields. So these media refresher courses could become part of their overall programmes. How for instance could an average reporter know the nuanced issues involved in HIV/AIDS, environment or gender reporting? What is not understood is, few if any journalists in any newspaper in the state, and indeed in most media organisations anywhere, get to specialise in any particular field and thus they all tend to be generalists. The pitfall of this predicament is what the IFP is also having to apologise in this editorial.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/to-refresh-journalism/

This editorial is prompted by reprimands from readers and well wishers who pointed out the insensitivity shown by the IFP in publishing the vividly clear picture of a raped and murdered girl some days ago on its front page. We do apologise for the serious slip, and hope not to repeat the mistake again. Our excuse is the usual. In the late evening rush hours of newspaper production, sometimes it is difficult to keep out the printer’s devil from playing havoc. Everybody who has had a formal academic course in journalism would have been told of this in their classes and also shown glaring bloomers even in very reputed newspapers in the past. But as we said this is only an excuse of a mistake we have made but not by any means an indicator we will continue to be lax in guarding against such insensitivities slipping past our news and image vetting procedures. This brings to the fore one other concern. As in academics, journalists too need to be put through occasional refresher courses in new developments in the professions as well as standards of general ethics which undoubtedly have a profound bearing on the discharge of their duty. After all, although in a different way, much of the terms of conduct of this profession too are cerebral in nature.

The Department of Information and Public Relations, DIPR, government of Manipur has a fortnight long certificate journalism training course each year with the objective of grooming young men and women on the threshold of choosing a career to develop an interest in the profession by getting them to have a glimpse of its inner dynamics. Senior journalists in the state are the resource persons for these annual events and the trainees are taught the classical definitions as well as practical problems of the profession. While this is a good effort, the point to be noted is, not many of those who undergo these courses ever join the profession. At the local level, the working conditions of the profession cannot match government jobs, so the brighter ones normally opt for the latter. Indeed many of them enlist in the DIPR courses for the certificate in the hope this would enhance their chances of getting into “any government job”, even a grade three or four one. The quality of education in the state being such, not many of them would also be able to match their competitors from many other states for journalistic jobs in the open market in better paying environs of other Indian metropolises.

This being the scenario, we would like to suggest that it would be much more profitable for the DIPR course to be converted to a refresher course for working journalists. The lectures then would not necessarily have be about news gathering or newspaper production, but can have a much larger parameter. As for instance, the course could orient itself towards issues like gender sensitivity, child rights, human rights, law, or for that matter grassroots welfare programmes of the State as well as Central governments, all of which the profession has to deal with, and all of which undoubtedly would have a strong bearing on the quality as well as efficacy of journalism in the state. The government could also tie up with the Manipur University, which already has a journalism department, and conduct such refresher courses periodically. Such an arrangement would be ideal, for the resource persons, not just in journalism but also in the other subjects of relevance to the profession would be readily available. Besides the government, we wonder if it would not be possible for some of the well-funded NGOs to hold lesser versions of the courses by way of workshops and media seminars. While there is a profusion of NGOs in the state working in the areas of HIV/AIDS, environment, gender issues, conflict resolution, we wonder what is keeping a sound media NGO from materialising here. Nobody will doubt how important the media in a situation such as Manipur’s, and in fact, the media’s relevance is also profound in the success of the campaigns by NGOs working in the above named fields. So these media refresher courses could become part of their overall programmes. How for instance could an average reporter know the nuanced issues involved in HIV/AIDS, environment or gender reporting? What is not understood is, few if any journalists in any newspaper in the state, and indeed in most media organisations anywhere, get to specialise in any particular field and thus they all tend to be generalists. The pitfall of this predicament is what the IFP is also having to apologise in this editorial.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/to-refresh-journalism/

It is depressing that today freight truck managing to reach the state capital has once again become material for front page news. A decade years ago, when the state government chose to implement the 5th Pay Commission recommendations for its employees without first getting the concurrence of the Central government, in the process going totally broke, it was the status of the state government’s bank balance with the Reserved Bank of India, RBI, which made headline news. RBI releasing funds for the state at the time had then come to be awaited eagerly by everybody in the state for it meant payment of government salaries. It is now unimaginable that at the time salaries for government employees were paid at intervals anywhere between three to six months. Anybody older than 15 years would remember what difficult times those were, with the markets acquiring a cadaveric hue, considering the biggest source for its liquidity was and still is the purchase power of salaried government employees. As always, the poor who had little or no credit worth were the hardest hit. Such things can only happen in Manipur. Here events and things which ought to be drearily normal and routine have become abnormal and conversely what would be considered abnormal anywhere in the world have become normal and everyday reality.

Now that the state is managing to maintain a healthier bank balance with the RBI and at least salaries for government employees are no longer the unbearable burden that it once was, there are other ordinary things which have taken their turns to acquire a grotesque visage, haranguing the ordinary citizenry once again. Essential commodities are beginning to disappear from the shop shelves, so have the petrol pumps dripped dry, prices are skyrocketing, and amidst all this government heads are either playing their fiddles unabashed, or else frantically and quixotically shadow boxing as if it believes this is enough to convince the people it means action. The twin economic blockade along the state’s lifelines by those demanding as well as opposing the proposed creation of SADAR hill district has come to rudely upset life in the state, bringing back the unfortunate reality of routine events turning into nightmares. And so, trucks movement along the highways have been transformed into headlines material. How much more pathetic can the situation get, and more importantly, how much longer is the government simply going to wait and watch this mounting misery unfold in the life of the state?

The contrast is rather uncanny. But if the routine can become abnormal in Manipur, so can many shockingly abnormal events also get reduced to the mundane. Visitors to the state would vouch this is so. They are bewildered at how ordinary citizens tolerate so many overwhelming but avoidable odds in daily life. Imagine this is a state where electric power for domestic consumption is available for only four hours a day; piped municipal water likewise is available to consumers for as little as an hour on alternate days; black toppings on city and country roads get washed away every monsoon. Broken roads mean mud during the wet seasons and dust during the dry. It is anybody’s guess what health implications this would have on the citizenry. Yet everybody seems to have come to accept all this as normal in a frustratingly fatalistic way. No accountability is ever fixed for all these failures and equally, no accountability is ever sought by the public for any of these either. The notion of citizen’s rights has been so badly skewed that today only the crassest violations seem to qualify to be called infringements. So while the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, is seen as the overbearing state breathing down neck of the ordinary men and women, health hazards posed by scarcity of safe drinking water or the omnipresent cloud of dust hanging above the roads in the state is seen as nothing to be so upset about. The threshold of concern has indeed been pushed up extremely high and only unnatural and violent deaths and injuries are seen as threat to life and dignity of the people. This raised threshold is dangerous, for it will end up a excusing a whole range of nuanced and not so nuanced atrocities by authorities given charge of the affairs of the state. It is time for the ordinary people to be sensitised on their rights that go beyond the loud and overt. In the end, it is coming to grip with all these rights, and not just the obvious, which is going to define the quality of life for everybody in the state.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/topsy-turvy-manipur/

Something is just not right in the manner the blockades on the highways have been allowed to carry on with the government doing precious little. By indicating in the manner that it is helpless in dealing with the situation, the government is sending out very wrong messages to the people by and large. To the docile the message is they should resign and hope and pray for the best to come on its own. This is hardly the kind of attitude to be encouraged by any forward thinking government or for matter anybody in the position of guardianship, be it at the family level or else the larger society. To the aggressive, the message would be radically different. It would almost be a license for them to take the law into their own hands at any time they wish and arm-twist the government into submission and thereby concede to whatever they wish to have. This latter reading of the message is a sure recipe for a never ending chain of street politics aimed at coercing the public and by a relayed delivery system the same coercive message would also reach the government.

As a matter of fact, this grotesque cycle of subversion is what has already taken roots in Manipur. By its very inaction, the government has been encouraging practically everybody, including students’ bodies, to develop an unhealthy sense of controlling and possessing State power, disproportionate to what civilised norms envisaged by the democratic polity, as legitimate. Hence, insurgent groups are de facto parallel government, issuing their own decrees, levying their own taxes, raising their own military etc, but even if this phenomenon needs a far more sophisticated response, what is beyond understanding is, what is keeping the government from controlling what it is mandated to control and what is very much within its power to do so? Why cannot it take the law in its own hands and not leave it up to the whim of every so called civil society organisation to dictate terms of how and by what norms the people should be governed. We are not talking about civil society bodies which lobby or resist government policies in the positive belief that the government’s will is not rigid, and provided it is made to see reason to the contrary of how it sees policy matters at any given time it can be made to alter or even drop these policies. We instead have in mind the mutant versions of civil society bodies which have come to believe they are the government and can not only make laws but also enforce them with violence. Should not civil society bodies be actually civil in nature and limit themselves to just challenging the government in civilised norms. What we get to see when this unwritten norm is crossed is what we are seeing today – virtual lawlessness.

The current blockade scenario is increasingly turning out to be another case of this state of lawlessness and the worst part of it is the government is apparently not taking any positive step to resolve the matter. It seems to be saying that indecision is also a conscious decision. Such an interrogation of set ideas would have made fine material for absorbing postmodern coffee house academic discussions, but in matters of the hard and brutal politics of the state, such an attitude is threatening to leave everybody, especially children belonging to below poverty line families, suffer from malnutrition. In the worst case scenario, it could end up accentuating or fomenting communal hostilities. So why is the government not swinging into action. True the situation is not easy and indeed would be akin to a Hobson’s choice as a decision either way would earn the ire of one or the other group advocating or opposing the idea of the creation of a separate SADAR Hills district. But although it is a truism that uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, the chief minister has no other choice but to exercise his own judgment on what the right decision should be and take it. At this moment, the most immediate need is to secure free, open and safe passage on all the national highways that connect the state to the rest of the country. One is reminded of a junior school textbook parable of a farmer and his son who went to the market riding their donkey and in trying to please everybody by doing what they presumed would please each of them, ultimately ended up carrying their donkey instead of riding it. The moot point is, the government must do whatever it needs to do to have the highways opened up totally, be it by reaching a settlement with the agitators or else using the power in the state’s command. If it is abjectly unable to accomplish this legitimate function of the state, it must voluntarily abdicate its position and make way for a spell of President’s Rule in the state to tackle the situation.

Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2011/09/indecision-as-decision/